


Gentle Annie

by sammyinlacypanties



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:15:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2391368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammyinlacypanties/pseuds/sammyinlacypanties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys head to Texas to investigate a case...and get more than they bargained for when they encounter a mysterious woman with no memory and frightening powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lost

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't technically a reader insert fic, but I have written the OFC's perspective in second person, to give more of an immersive feel. What can I say, I grew up on choose-your-own-adventure books. Enjoy.

Light – light was the first thing you comprehended – then shades of blue and soft white; the sky. You were lying on your back, looking up at the sky. You hurt. You moved your head – green; trees. Tall trees all around you, like a living green canyon. You sat up, and saw a ribbon of hard black road running through the trees, bending away out of your sight in either direction.

You were naked, and you hurt, and you didn’t know where you were, or who you were.

_My hair, it’s…_

You ran a hand through your hair. It was short and choppy, uneven, like someone had clumsily hacked it off. Somehow you knew it should be long. It had been long before, but you didn’t know anything about ‘before’. Your nails had been cut – or torn, you couldn’t tell which – to the quick, leaving a dull throb at the ends of your fingers.

You stood up on shaky legs, like a newborn fawn, except you could not remember ‘before’ when you might have ever seen a fawn.

Where you had lain, beside the road, there was a perfectly woman-shaped patch of dead grass. Your shape. It meant nothing, for you knew nothing.

You started to walk.

On the road at first, but this road was hard and hot and after awhile it hurt your feet. You stepped off the road, into the soft grass. You set your eyes on the bend in the road. If you could only just get around it, that wall of trees blocking everything from view…

And when you got around it, and saw nothing but the same – green walls trapping you, nowhere to go but forward or back or through the wild underbrush, you felt a pit in your stomach.

You were naked, and you hurt, and you didn’t know where you were, or who you were.

You kept walking. All you had was your motion. And suddenly the grass ceased to be soft, and you looked down – and saw you were leaving little dead footprints in your wake. Where you stepped, the grass and wildflowers withered.

You kept walking. You walked, and it couldn’t have been that long, for the sun had barely moved, but it felt like forever – when you came around another bend and you could _see_. To the right of the road, the side you were on, the wall of trees abruptly ended and a field began. There was a sign, right at that spot – “Now Leaving the Davy Crockett National Forest”. The trees continued on the left, but now there was a fence – rough wooden posts stringed with lines of ugly metal barbs. The field to your right was fenced the same way. Wherever you were, it was not showing itself to be a friendly place. You approached the fenced field, and looked, and the heads of grain told you that it was almost harvest time. No one had told the sun, however. It beat down on your naked back and you could feel your skin starting to burn. You knew nothing, but somehow you knew that had never happened to you before. You craned your neck and looked over the field – grain, and far in the distance another wall of trees, and nothing else.

You kept walking, leaving your dry brown footprints as you went.

The sun now smiled his harsh, mocking smile at you from a different angle, and fences had come and gone, and now you walked next to a corn field, when you heard a rumbling. It came up the road from where you had been, like some angry beast. You backed away from the road, as close to the sharp barbs of the fence as you dared, too distraught to notice the corn stalks behind you wilting as you approached them, and suddenly the beast roared into view. Except it was not a beast – it was a huge machine, rolling on wheels half as tall as you and belching black smoke.

As the machine neared you, it slowed, then stopped, and a door opened and a man stepped out.

His eyes were red, his clothes were stained, and he looked at you as a wolf might look at a lamb. But you didn’t know about wolves or lambs – you knew nothing.

“Whatcha doin all the way out here, sugar? Might wanna put some clothes on. Tell you what, I got a spare pair o clothes in my truck, and I’ll let you have em.”

The man took a step toward you. You took a step back, your skin grazing the metal wire of the fence now, corn stalks drying and shriveling behind you, grass browning all around.

The man seemed not to notice. He was looking intently at you, though not at your face. “Come on now, I won’t bite. I’ll just give you a ride into town, ya know, help you out darlin.”

But he did not intend to help you. That much you _knew_ , even if you knew nothing else. The barbed wire was pressing into your back now – you could go no further.

“There something wrong with you, girl?” The man closed in, reached for your arm, and you recoiled in fright – and then his head exploded, spattering you and his truck and the desiccated ground with his blood and brains, and he fell on the hard black road, dead.

You walked, and walked, past fields of crops and untended brambly forest and a cow pasture – one of the cows got too close and collapsed, another victim caught in your swath of destruction. Living things within ten feet of you perished, wildflowers bowing their heads, insects popping open like kettle corn, field mice that were healthy one second shriveling like old corpses the next. The more death surrounded you, the more upset you became – you were on the verge of panic now – and the more upset you were, the wider your path of death stretched. Now crops on the other side of the road were withering, and trees on your side rained brown leaves down on you. You felt a warm wetness on your thigh and looked down – you were bleeding from between your legs, and you knew you should not be, and you knew that if you did not stop killing things you would bleed out and die, naked and nameless on the side of the road, a trail of destruction behind you for miles. You were hungry – starving – and you saw before you a persimmon tree, its gnarled roots and stem threatening to tear the fence it shaded from the ground, and you reached up for one of those bright orange fruits, and it withered in your hand.

You sat down under the tree, almost feeling it recoil from your presence, and you cried, and you bled, your tears and blood scorching the once-fertile ground, and as the sun began to hide his despicable face from you, you fell asleep.

__________________

Sam was cooking eggs and bacon in the kitchen of the bunker, still yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, when Dean walked in. The older Winchester was buzzing with excitement and had obviously been awake for awhile now.

"Rise and shine, Sammy!"

"Dean, I would rather not ever hear you use that phrase again after...nevermind. What's got you so pumped?"

"Found us a case, and boy is it a weird one." Dean plopped a stack of printed out dispatch dialogue and a fresh police report on the table - things that average hunters might have had a bit of trouble getting their hands on, but after all, Dean Winchester was Batman.

"On the edge of a national forest in the boonies of Texas, there is a path of dead things. Trees, grass, small animals - "

"So, demonic activity?" Sam sat down and started flipping through the dispatch records.

"Yeah, but since when have demons caused their victims' heads to explode like party poppers?"

Dean pushed the police report, complete with photos from the scene, towards Sam. "This guy's truck was parked and idling, and a passerby called the police to report the guy was laying dead on the road. Or, well, most of him. His head - skull, brains, blood, the works - was scattered over a ten-foot radius. All the grass and crops within five yards were withered, and when the farmer who owns the property by the highway there came to have a look, he swore that patch of corn had been fine a few days before. There was a trail of dead leading away from the scene, but about a mile up the road it stopped. The local police are stumped."

"Definitely sounds like our kind of thing," Sam said, puzzling over the papers, the gears of his mind beginning to turn.

"Awesome. I've been going crazy holed up in here, man. Pack your best suit, Sammy, cause this is a job for the Feds."


	2. Found

You woke in the misty hours before dawn to the sound of a bird, singing in the top of the gnarled persimmon tree - which had dropped half its fruits during the night, drawing a multitude of bees and butterflies to the sickly sweet smell. Apparently you were not killing things at the moment. _Let's keep it that way,_ you thought, taking a deep breath and gathering yourself. You looked back the way you came - and remembered with a start that you had killed a man yesterday, and that there was a trail of destruction leading from him right to where you now sat. Another deep breath. Stay calm. You had to continue on, but without leaving such an obvious trace. You took a look at the rough, unforgiving blacktop, sighed, and got to your feet. Another deep breath, and you were able to pick two of the remaining persimmons from the tree, biting into the soft, sweet flesh and feeling the sticky juice run down your chin. This one would be for now, and the other you would eat later.

You stepped onto the road and began to walk.

After an hour or so, your soft bare feet were torn and blistered by the asphalt - you could not continue walking on this road. To the right, in the distance, there was a farmhouse on a hill, in the middle of a pasture. There would be food there, and clothing and shelter. _But I have killed a man._ No shelter would be safe if there were others there. To the left, a creek ran beside the road for a bit and then turned away into the woods. _Water_. You walked across the road, slid your body carefully between the two lines of barbed wire, and knelt by the stream. Not caring how clean it was, you set down your remaining persimmon and splashed the water onto your face, cleaning off the sticky fruit juice and the dried blood of the dead man. Then you drank, and drank, and you were about to begin washing the rest of your body when you heard it - that roaring sound again, the sound that could mean redemption but more likely meant damnation - and you retreated farther into the brush, hiding yourself behind a thick pine tree, and watched as a sleek black machine rolled slowly into view.

___________

When Sam and Dean arrived at the local police station that morning, they could tell that this was a much more grisly and baffling case than this area usually saw - and that the locals were in over their heads. The place was practically buzzing with energy, and the coffeemaker was working doubletime. The coroner was absolutely stumped, and an examination of the body yielded no clues. The highway patrolman who had been the first to arrive on the scene was there, but the boys didn't get much useful info out of him either. He had obviously been up all night, and blinked slowly and sipped his coffee when agents 'Kennedy' and 'Monroe' flashed their FBI badges.

"Welp, if yall've read the police report then you know it all already. No witnesses, nuthin. There was a bit of blood on the bob'war fence that didn't match the vic - we sent it to a lab and got squat. Must've been somethin wrong with their machine, cause they couldn't even tell us what kinda blood it was. Yall're welcome to take a look at the scene, but don't git yer hopes up, fellas."

"Thank you for your time, officer." Dean turned to Sam, and they talked softly as they exited the station. "Dude, it's gotta be something that's not human, if they couldn't even place the blood sample."

"Yeah, but I've researched and gone through Dad's journal and haven't found anything about exploding heads and dying crops. This whole thing is weird. If we don't find something at the scene, we're in the dark."

They got into the car and Dean cranked her up. "Well, we'll just have ourselves a look at the place and see if we can't scrounge up some answers. After all, Sammy, we're the freakin Winchesters."

Sam sighed and shook his head, but secretly he was pleased. It was nice to see Dean pumped about a case like he used to be, and even Sam had to admit - it was always a thrill to chase a monster that no one seemed to know anything about. It was a puzzle for Sam's mind to solve, and he was always eager for the chance to be the first to discover a creature. He had a few theories cooking in his brain, but nothing concrete yet.

When they arrived at the taped-off area by the side of the seemingly endless Texas highway, there were onlookers. "Aw, great," Dean groaned as he unfolded his long legs and stepped out of the Impala. After displaying their badges, Sam and Dean learned that this group of three preppy college girls had been camping in the national forest up the road the night before last when something strange had happened.

"We were getting into our sleeping bags. It was like, midnight," the blonde one said. "And then, like all of a sudden, there was this light through the trees, like maybe a mile or two up the road"

"Yeah, but it wasn't a flashlight. It was, like, unreal", the brunette offered.

"And then, there was this loud BOOM!" the redhead interjected. "It shook the trees, and our lantern went out. We were **so** scared."

Dean asked them if they had gone to check it out, and they gasped, appalled. "Are you kidding!?" The blonde looked downright offended. "We have seen _way_ too many horror movies to be that stupid. We hid in our tent till yesterday morning."

The brunette spoke. "Yeah but then, when the sun was up, we came to look at the spot and there was like, this weird dead person-shape in the grass."

The redhead practically whispered, "And when we followed the footprints, they led us here. The cops wouldn't let us get too close, but it looked like...like this trucker's head just exploded! We are **so** glad we stayed in that tent."

"Thank you for your time, ladies. Stay safe," Sam said. The campers got back in their car and drove off, apparently eager to put an end to their camping trip. "You find anything?" Sam asked, as Dean circled the scene, looking at the ground.

"Besides liquefied brain leftovers and dead grass? Bupkis. But there's a trail that goes off up the road. The police said it was a dead end, but...well, we ain't police."

The brothers cruised up the road slowly in the Impala, past the dead cow, until they came to a half-withered fruit tree - and there the trail ended. They got out and looked around, then drove a little farther than the police had thought to go and looked around some more, and were on the verge of giving up - until a twig snapped in the woods across the road, and both men turned their heads, sharp senses picking up a slight movement in the brush. Dean drew his gun - loaded with silver bullets - and Sam pulled the demon knife, and they crept closer to the fence on the left side of the road.

"We know you're there," Dean said, "and we know what you've done. No use hiding."

And then a woman stepped out timidly from behind a tree. She was naked, and sunburned, with shorn hair and dried blood down her thighs. She was unsteady on her feet, and the look on her face was one of terror. She took a few weak steps toward them, then saw the weapons and froze. Pine needles began to drop from the branches around her.

Sam sheathed his knife and motioned for Dean to lower his gun, then began to slowly approach the woman, hands held out in front of him.

"Dude, what are you -"

"We don't want to hurt you," Sam assured the frightened woman. "We just want to know what's going on."

"I..." Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. "I don't know. Please, don't get too close..."

Sam stopped, still holding up his hands in a nonthreatening posture.

"Sam, this chick _exploded_ a guy."

"So put up your gun, Dean."

"I didn't mean to," she offered weakly. "He...he wanted to hurt me and he got too close...and the cow, and the plants, I...I couldn't stop it. Please, I don't know where I am."

"What exactly _are_ you?" Dean asked suspiciously.

"I don't know. I don't know how I got here, or my name. I'm so lost..." Her weak knees failed her, and she collapsed onto the ground, tears streaming down her face.

Sam turned to Dean. "We can't kill her, man."

"How do you even know she's telling the truth?"

"Look at her. She's barely conscious. She said the trucker wanted to hurt her, right? So as long as we don't upset her, we'll be fine."

"So what, we just leave her out here? On the loose?"

Sam looked at the weeping woman and sighed. "We have to help her, Dean."

"No frickin way."

"Look, the bunker's the safest place on earth. She won't hurt anyone there, and we've got a whole library to help us figure out who she is. And seriously - wouldn't it be nice to have something like...whatever she is...on our side? Maybe this is good luck for once."

"Yeah, fat chance." But Dean holstered his gun, and sighed deeply, and cursed. "Fine, load her up."

The woman watched warily as Sam rummaged in the front seats of the Impala and retrieved a bottle of water and a cold breakfast burrito. He slowly approached with the offering held out, and when he got within arm's reach she snatched the food and water from his hands, wolfing down the greasy burrito and guzzling the water. She held her stomach for a moment as if the sudden gorging might make her sick, and Sam slowly took off his jacket and placed it around her peeling shoulders. The nausea passed and she slowly stood up, swaying on unsteady legs, drawing the jacket around her tightly. Sam held out his hand and she took it tentatively, and he led her to the car and helped her into the back seat.

By the time they crossed into Oklahoma they had stopped at a convenience store for some wet paper towels, a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. Now slightly less bloody, fully clothed and still huddled in Sam's jacket, the strange woman was fast asleep as the sun began to set over the lonely stretch of highway.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry - there will be sexytimes eventually ;)


End file.
